Apparatus and method for compressing video information

Abstract

A method and apparatus is disclosed for efficiently encoding data representing a video image, thereby reducing the amount of data that must be transferred to a decoder. The method includes transforming data sets utilizing a tensor product wavelet transform which is capable of transmitting remainders from one subband to another. Collections of subbands, in macro-block form, are weighted, detected, and ranked enabling prioritization of the transformed data. A motion compensation technique is performed on the subband data producing motion vectors and prediction errors which are positionally encoded into bit stream packets for transmittal to the decoder. Subband macro-blocks and subband blocks which are equal to zero are identified as such in the bit stream packets to further reduce the amount of data that must be transferred to the decoder.

1 - 3 . (canceled) 
   
   
       4 . A method of encoding a data set into transform coefficients comprising transforming the data set utilizing an encoding technique and propagating remainders derived during encoding from a first filter path to a second filter path of the encoder. 
   
   
       5 . The method of encoding as recited in  claim 4 , further including propagating remainders from the second filter path to the first filter path. 
   
   
       6 . The method of encoding as recited in  claim 4 , wherein the encoding technique is a tensor product wavelet transform. 
   
   
       7 . The method of encoding as recited in  claim 4 , wherein the encoding technique is a discrete cosine transform. 
   
   
       8 . A method of encoding a data set comprising:
 determining a first filter component of the data set in a first filter path; determining a second filter component of the data set in a second filter path; normalizing the first filter component to generate a normalized output and a remainder, and propagating the remainder to the second filter path.   
   
   
       9 . A method of estimating changes occurring between a first data set and a second data set comprising: generating a search region about a data subset from one of the first and second data sets; applying a related data subset from the other of the first and second data sets to the search region; and traversing incrementally the related data subset within the search region to a position representing a best incremental match. 
   
   
       10 . The method of estimating changes occurring between a first data set and a second data set as recited in  claim 9 , further including traversing fractionally the related data subset within the search region to a position representing a best fractional match.